Apple recently upped the ante in the portable player with the iPod Nano. As Apple’s official website states, "take everything you love about the iPod and shrink it, then shrink it once again…" and the Nano seems to be just that, the smallest, sleekest and the most functional of iPods. It has features previously available on only the top end models, like a fully functional crisp color screen, ability to display album covers, storing photos and running slide shows. Apple claims a decent 14-hour battery life, which going by its claims for previous iPods should be easily met, if not exceeded.

The Nano replaces Apple’s iPod Mini with a brilliant mixture of style, functionality and pure drool value but that’s what all Apple products are. The difference, however, between the larger iPods and the Nano is that it’s flash based, which means light weight, lightening fast and attractive enough to make the other iPods look chunkier and downright obese.

In a recent market survey, Sony has beaten Apple to the number one spot in the flash drive based MP3 player category; this is most certainly Apple’s answer to that challenge. Apple now spans the entire gamut of MP3 player sizes including 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 20GB, 40GB, and 60GB but more interestingly, it has spread out price points and will let you go mobile for as low as $99. As we see it, Apple has the price advantage; Apple most certainly has the product advantage, and now its up to the other manufacturers to respond to the Nano.

iPod Nano brings us to the age old debate of flash versus micro drives. Is flash the way to go? Quite possibly so! In fact, recent reports suggest that Samsung will soon supply flash drives to Apple. Imagine the volumes that the iPods get, and it’s easy to figure out that the price of flash memory could come down with millions of them being sold to Apple alone.

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